Translating technical texts into Zulu with the aid of multilingual and/or parallel corpora

Abstract

The single biggest problem that translators have to contend with when translating from an international language such as English into a so-called minor language or language of limited diffusion (LLD) such as Zulu, is the lack of terminology in the majority of specialist subject fields. In this article we demonstrate how special-purpose multilingual and parallel corpora can be utilised as a translator's tool in finding suitable term equivalents when translating technical texts into Zulu. Although translators working into languages such as, for example, English and French follow this methodology as a matter of course, it has (to our knowledge) not yet been shown how such a course of action may be applied to the African languages, and specifically to Zulu in this case.